Saturday, November 14, 2015

The Price of Civilization

Here we are yet again.

Terror, death, chaos.

Already the drums are sounding, the trumpets call us to arms.

War is coming yet again.

But … well, it’s not the war I wonder about, it’s what comes after.

In a comment on my Facebook page, somebody asked how this could happen. Paris. How could this happen and nobody see it coming? It seems as if terrorism sprouts like mushrooms, the commenter puzzled, one minute the world is normal, and the next BOOM!

Indeed, terrorism is like that. Boom. Everything is normal, then boom.

But it only seems that way.

You see, terrorism like this doesn't just pop up like mushrooms.

It grows, inch by inch, day by day, cell by cell, recruit by recruit. Most of the time it grows right out in the sunlight, ignored - not unnoticed, ignored. Just as it was here in the US, because it's over there, somewhere, in some Third World shithole and we just don't care so long as it's not us.

And in this case it's been doing exactly that in Syria and Iraq and North Africa for years now.

It's not just us, this blithe happy ignorance. It happens all over the world and has for as long as there has been civilization. In recent memory, Russia, France, Spain, the UK, Northern Ireland, Italy, Somalia, and the Middle East. It is the nature of human beings to argue and squabble and dismiss until it's too late. Climate change, pollution, failing economy, poverty, disease, collapse, war, it's all the same.

Terrorism? It comes from chaos. From conflict and exploitation, from endless ruin and crushing poverty and bleak desperation. It comes from religion and ideology run mad.

You want to know why someone would strap an explosive belt to themselves and run into a crowd?

I’ll tell you.

It’s not complicated, it’s because they have literally nothing better to do, that's why.

It’s because the vague promise of some glorious afterlife is better than anything else in their lives.

It is absolutely no different, no different, from those who would let the world burn because they believe their own prophet is coming soon to rapture them away to some eternal bliss while the rest of us roast in eternal torment. The only difference is in degree.

We created this. Paris. Yes we did.

What’s that?

Oh, you’re offended, are you? Offended that I say it’s our own fault. That we created this. You’re offended. Got your red, white, and blue panties in a bunch? How dare I? How dare I?

If you want to do something about terrorism, actually do something about terrorism, then you start by being honest with yourself.

We created this.

Terrorism, the kind we face today? It comes from the fact that we, us, we keep blowing up civilization and leaving nothing but death and ruin in our wake. Terrorists are like cockroaches, they thrive on chaos and destruction and we're damned good at creating that chaos. I know, I spent most of my life in the business of war.

We created this.

Yes we did. We created the conditions for it to grow. To incubate, ignored over there, in the chaos we created.

Thirty years ago we denounced the Soviets for destroying Afghanistan and leaving nothing but ruins, a destroyed civilization, chaos. But we, we Americans, we were right in there, weren't we? Funding and fueling the Mujahedeen - creating our own enemies, just as the Romans did 2000 years ago. We could have done something about it, sure. We could have rebuilt that civilization after the Soviet Union pulled out. We could have made the Mujahedeen our friends. We could have. But it would have cost us money. Our money. Lots of money, vast, vast sums of it. It would have taken decades of sustained commitment. It would have taken effort.

The "freedom fighters" we trained, we equipped, we left behind, became what?

They became the Taliban.

They became Al Qaida.

They became the seeds of our own destruction.

And we learned nothing.

Then the same amoral sons of bitches who diddled in Afghanistan without regard to the consequences took us into Iraq.

And we reduced Iraq to lawless ruin.

Oh, we won the war, I know, I was there. We won the war, sure we did and they cheered us in the streets just as our leaders told us they would.

And then?

And then?

Then it all went sideways. It all fell apart. It all fell apart because we are damned good at destroying nations, not so good at building them.

Destruction is easy, creation is the hard part.

We had no plan. We didn’t care enough to have a plan, to see it through, to govern what we’d won, to rebuild the nation we’d destroyed, to beat swords into plowshares, to earn the respect and keep the friendship of the people we’d supposedly freed. We let it fall apart. And then, like Vietnam four decades before, we walked away. See yah, have fun with your freedom!

We let Syria disintegrate and we still can't make up our minds who to back, the evil dictator who hates us, or the Islamic state who hates us, or the Russians who we hate. And Syria is just one of a dozen places currently falling apart.

Meanwhile, right here in our own country, a bunch of religious lunatics who pray to their small and mean god every single day for their own idiotic rapture, make it worse by throwing gasoline on the fire at every turn in their unending obsession with the end of the world. War, war, war, they just can’t get enough in the name of their religion of love and peace.

We haven't cleaned up the last mess and they want more war, more chaos, want to destroy yet another country. They gleefully point to the horror they helped make and proclaim it a sign from upon high, glory glory hallelujah, the End Times are come. Praise Jesus!

Well, it looks as if their miserable god has finally answered their prayers and they'll get their wish. War. Again. Because now we have no choice.

And I will bet you whatever sum of money you like, because I used to do this for a living, that right now the war machine is spinning up. The sabers are rattling, the ships are preparing to sail, the bombers are fueling up, and the trumpets are sounding To Arms, To Arms! As they must for the barbarians are at the gate and now? Now we have no choices at all.

But...

But what comes after?

We’ll rush in, like the fools we are, heedless yet again. Our own children will march off to war to the sounds of cheering crowds and they’ll come home in bags, hidden away from public view. We’ll speak the solemn words, sacrifice, patriotism, duty, honor, courage. We’ll bomb another country to ruin, kill thousands, millions. Oh, we’ll win the war, don’t you fear, of course we will, we always do. We’re good at it.

But…

But meanwhile, what comes after?

What’s the plan this time?

What have we learned? What have we learned from all those lives? From all that blood? From all that destruction?

What have we learned from terror?

Terrorism grows like bacteria in warm agar, among the destruction and ruin of war. Terrorism grows in the gaps between civilization. And so what is the plan for after the war? After we’ve blown up the world yet again?

What comes after?

It does you no good to kill cockroaches if you don’t clean up the rot and mess and the filth they live on, if you leave chaos and darkness for them to breed in. More will always come in an unending tide.

So what’s the plan for after?

Paris was caused by Iraq. By Syria. By Afghanistan. By chaos and destruction and because the terrorists had nothing better, literally nothing better, to do with their miserable lives.

Unless we do something about that, then Paris isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning.

Oddly enough,Jim, Me been sayin this to others all mornin. You expressed it better than Me could. Thank you for that.Me can only hope(although given your vast experience in "the Machine"almost precludes it) that this time that you are wrong. That THIS time we can do better.If not, than me afraid that this is only the beginning;and we will ALL end up living as Nomadic herders,walking amongst the ruins of yet another failed civilization. <(:*(

What makes you think they don't? They have just chosen to do nothing about it - destroy countries - deny responsibility - just like they treat our American Veterans. Looks like we are going to have a whole lot more of those soon :(

Our leaders DO have the ability to see this. Of course they do! They are making billions off of it! They COUNT on it. They laugh when they make our enemies and laugh when they rake in the money when they bet on the destruction, then cause it, then pull the trigger.

It's a win-win for the leaders on both sides.It's a win-win for the military industrial complex on both sides.It's a win-win for the media on both sides.

The losers are civilization, our children and the biosphere.Yes. We are on the cusp of a global mass extinction. War is connected to fossil fuel is connected to climate change. We've had the technology to replace most of our fossil fuels for decades.http://crankypoodle.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-energy-shortage.html

Funny you should say that, about them having nothing better to do. I saw an article a few months ago claiming that young men join isis not only because they are they bullied into it, but because there are no jobs in the caliphate. No way for them to earn money and have a life other than isis. A kind of 'if you can't beat them, join them' thing.I wonder how true that is.

But...I read recently that "jihadi John" had a computer science degree, probably from a reputable school, and was a pretty bright guy. I seem to remember that some of the 9/11 terrorists were well-educated, and well-off. I understand that "terrorism is the voice of the voiceless", but many of these criminals seem to have a voice, and a choice, and I really can't understand what the appeal is. Are they psychopaths who've found a home?

It was the same with Al Qaeda, and honestly it's the same in the US to a lesser degree. You have a small handful of smart, educated, power-hungry, hateful assholes who mobilize the desperate, poor, and hungry.

9/11 was planned by the child of a Saudi billionaire and executed by other Saudis.

From what I have read, the underlying philosophy of DAESH is apocalyptic. (I used the term DAESH because they are not Islamic, not a state, and not just in Syria or the Levant.)They want the refugees they have created to feel abandoned, and they want to draw the West into an active war in the Middle East.

In the view of their leaders, this war will be an Armageddon which they will win and enjoy whatever rewards follow.

Many so-called leaders in the U.S. (the great Satan) have thus far played right into their plan.

Some of the same leaders and others in the body politic harbor similar apocalyptic desires, only they think they will win and be rewarded.

Every time we go through this (which is all too often) this song and these lyrics go on steady repeat in my head...

The civil wars and the uncivilized warsConflagrations leap out of every poor furnaceThe food cooks poorly and everyone goes hungryFrom then on it'sDog eat dog, dog eat body, and body eat dogI can't go down there, I can't understand itI'm a no good cowardAnd an American too, a north American that isNot a south or a central or a native AmericanOh, I must not think bad thoughts

Former Army Chief of Staff Edward Shinseki was asked by the Bushies what it would take to sort out Iraq after we invaded. He said we'd need 600,000 peopke to provide the needed public services and security. They dismissed him and forced his retirement (and even had the bad manners to not attend the ceremony).If there's no short-term solution where someone can make a buck, we on't care.Good analysis Jim. Ever wonder why so many of us that served don't want any more of this crap ??

Always wondered what they had on Gen. Colin Powell for him to standup and bold-faced lie about the WMDs? Thirty years ago I would've followed him anywhere, except into that den of thieves in the White House.

No indication "they had" anything on General Powell, but there is every indication in the historical record that he was deceived about the evidence. He has said as much himself, I believe. And Powell's credibility was a big deal in selling the invasion to the American public and our allies.

This is an excellent article! I am passing it on to my two sons ...both veterans of multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. During that time I was vehemently against the manufacture of the war, all the while praising the troops. I pray that one day the creators of the Iraq war will be called to bear responsibility for all of it by the international community. One more thing readers....can the proofreaders out there stop pointing out spelling errors and absorb the content? Please!

I want to find some way, some means of grasping all of this, of holding it and turning it over and studying it in some desperate reaching way to even begin to understand it. Forget what God hath wrought - what in seven hells have WE wrought?

My Facebook page has exploded with those calling for war - people on both sides of the political spectrum ready to pull the trigger and send even more of "our own" to slaughter more of "them bad guys." I keep wanting to ask them, "When are you leaving for Syria to get started?" But of course, it's not THEM going. "Someone has to stay home and look out for the businesses and safety of the nation here." They're real quick to send other peoples' kids off, though... the return home afterward, well... "And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chest and say what a brave charge it was." I am so very tired of the fearmongering and the incessant war footing and the ceaseless "victimizing" of - and let's be brutally honest here - the white Western peoples, all so those gold watch fobs can buy another politician. But like you said, Jim - we're great at making messes, shit at cleaning them up. We're two-year-olds with Daddy's guns... and that's a whole other issue.

Hang in there, Chief. I want to say there's a calm after this storm, but I don't want to lie. You pick your nightmare and you try to survive a little longer. Maybe we can change it in the upcoming elections. Maybe, those of us who are left.

The real shame is that after WWII it was gotten mostly right. Japan and Germany and Italy were rebuilt. The people were willing, sure, but the backing, the funds, the incentives were all there. The US invested in its returning servicepeople with the GI bill and in its former enemies with the Marshall plan and got excatly the opposite outcome than the current shambles. Why are those lessons forgotten...The saddest part of Charlie Wilson's War is the end. They knew at the time what would happen. And still just walked away.

Their plan was to privatize the Iraqi oil fields and loot them for the money to pay for the war. Unfortunately for the war planners, the people that were put in charge would have none of that and firmly told them to get stuffed when the idea was broached to steal the oil fields. Odd that the ones who had integrity in this case were the oil men they put in charge.

The Mercator Map. It’s the one we all remember from the school classroom. The teacher had to pull it down from its roller every once in a while. And it is drawn to focus our attention on the landmasses. It is useful in its way. How many of us have seen the same projection drawn to highlight the oceans instead? It is a definite change in perspective.

Does it all come down to how we teach history? I mean, we've ALL heard - endlessly - about this war then that war then the next war. But no history book at grade school or high school level seems to talk about things like the Marshall Plan - not much more than a name anyway. The texts talk about the expenditures for war building - but are silent when it comes to peace building. This extends into the common culture. How many war movies are there against how many peace-building ones?

And how would we get this perspective publicized? Maybe we need the likes of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg to make a blockbuster about what went into the Marshall Plan. Maybe this would get the peace-building of history made part of the public discourse. Bridge of Spies whatever its historical inaccuracies, strikes me as another step in a better direction. Charlie Wilson's War was good, but it wasn't enough.

Fucking nailed it, Mr. Wright. I've been thinking about this all day, that WE caused this years ago. Thanks for saying it for me. We, as a nation, had best come up with something other than mindless jingoism or empty platitudes like coloring Facebook avatars in the French flag.

...and it's not just the Middle East where we spin our web of ugliness. We have managed to support our corporations in their insidious effort to rape and pillage from other nations in the name of their bottom line profits and one day, not too far from this one, we will also begin to pay for that monstrous level of niceties that we have unleashed on others. Take a long look at how we encouraged our very own Bechtel Corporation to go into The Republic of Congo and start a bloody, gruesome head and arm chopping civil war simply because the President of that nation refused to allow Bechtel to mine and essentially completely profit from the extraction of Tantalum (Coltan) which is used in just about every electronic device we have created. The nerve of those black folks in Africa, to want to control their own hugely important resource. That nervy, bold behavior on the part of the Congolese got them a funded and trained rebel army that poured over their borders and set upon hacking the arms, heads and legs off the quiet, peaceful population in one of the bloodiest wars ever seen in recorded history. What did our country do about an out of control corporation who was behind this slaughter....? Absolutely nothing. Simply because our Congressmen and women have been bought-off by enormous levels of cash in their reelection coffers so they would look the other way while Bechtel ruined a democracy so that they could reap the profit windfall. Bechtel hasn't limited their fun and gales to the Congo, either. They tried to take over the entire fresh water supply of Bolivia, albeit with much less combat hubris, until they were turned away by a civil call to arms in which the Bolivians literally voted out the local dorks who had sold-out to Bechtel's demands. Soon enough, the folks who were over-run will form their own Jihad squads and outrageous attacks like the one we have just seen in paris, will visit our shores. We planted the seeds, and someday we will reap the ugly harvest in a city, or neighborhood near you.

Now just follow your line of thought and you will find yourself looking glaringly at George Schultz who served as Secretary of Labor Under and Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon; President, Director and Senior Counselor for Bechtel Corporation; chairman of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and Secretary of State under Reagan; senior member of the so-called "Vulcans", a group of policy mentors under G. W. Bush which also included Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice; the very man who was considered the father of the "Bush Doctrine" and defends the Bush administration's foreign policy

I get so tired of reading the drivel from all the tough guys on the internet. Which is why you are such a delight to read. You are a warrior and you speak with a warrior's voice. A warrior knows the difference between "tough" and "strong".

You tell it like it is, Jim, I can always count on you for that. I doubt we'll ever see peace in our lifetime, or our children's lifetime for that matter. We've set ourselves on a path of never ending destruction. It's sickening how it's all driven by a perversion of religion, not just one, but all of them, twisted and turned into something grotesque.

When have we seen peace in our lifetimes? Vietnam was going on when I was born. It ended when I was 14. With nothing else to do we fought in Beirut. Invaded Grenada and Panama. Then Desert Storm. Somalia. The Balkans. Afghanistan. Iraq again. Now pretty much then entire Middle East. That's not including all the little brush fire events that we haven't been told about where our special forces were deployed. It's possible that Carter was honest about his being the only regime in recent history where we weren't shooting at someone, but I wouldn't really bet on that one.

We still have a copy of the first issue of The Onion after 9/11. It was, my husband and I thought, an almost Pulitzer worthy examination of how we as a society were reacting, as well as a barely satirical truth-bomb of how we got to that point. Unfortunately, it didn't even make a dent in the college crowd it was aimed at, let alone those who aren't being challenged to think critically about anything, let alone foreign policy.

I've been saying something similar for years, but people don't want to hear that. How many civilians dead in the Middle East? How much "collateral damage"? No one cares until it's in their backyard. It's not their family so who cares. The armchair warmongers this morning make me want to scream. How many of their children are they putting up to fight the battle they want so bad? I'd be willing to bet the vast majority would say "none". I have a son in the army and my daughter's boyfriend in the air force and it scares the crap out of me; the thought of losing more people I love. But these people love to make it sound like "boots ont he ground" is the greatest thing since sliced bread as long as it's not them or their family going. And they'll still vote for the idiots who just voted against the Veterans Bill.

We created it. We created it each and every time we had a chance to step up to the plate, but Halliburton profits were more important.

What amazes and dismays me is how many members of the military are all gung- ho for going back. These are supposedly combat veterans saying things like "Let's go finish the job". How the hell can they think it will be any different this time than the last? Short of going over there as true conquerors and disarming every person there, holding them in concentration camps, and somehow changing their outlook all at the same time will we be able to stop an insurgency like the last time we were there in force. It isn't going to happen because the political will is not there. Though you can bet they'd somehow find it in the budget for this war too.

"It is absolutely no different, no different, from those who would let the world burn because they believe their own prophet is coming soon to rapture them away to some eternal bliss while the rest of us roast in eternal torment. The only difference is in degree. "

Religious fundamentalism holds the Islamic State together. Certainly, some embrace apocalyptic views of their own religion, just as extremists embrace an apocalyptic view of Christianity among evangelicals in our own country. Perhaps even a majority. You'd have to interview them to find out.

Extremist structures, be they religious or political, beget extremism. They always have.

Apocalyptic literature, such as the book of the Revelation, was common during the times of early Christianity and early Islam. It was a form of literature common to many different sects of these religions and to other contemporary religions. The problem is, now we have people 2000 years later still looking at that literary form as a script instead of as an allegory. We have several confirmed Dominionists (people who follow this line of thought) running our country in high places. There was no plan for peace because the plan is to turn the Middle East into glass and vindicate the rule of Israel to the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates, as is outlined in the Bible. The upcoming election is vitally important. Don't miss it.

And, riffing on what Jim Wright wrote, it doesn't start in 2001, or 1990, or 1978- it starts in the 1800s, as the corpse of the Ottoman Empire is nibbled on by hungry European powers. It starts in 1920, when the white soldiers and statesmen at Versailles agreed on "self-determination," but only for European whites at the expense of Germany and Austria; not the millions of non-whites who suffered under colonial rule. And, it started in 1953, when our smiling, grandfatherly President Eisenhower sent Kermit Roosevelt and $1 million into Iran to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossaddegh. But, these inconvenient facts of History are often overlooked by those who would beat the drums of war and say "why us?"

We could play that game all day - the corpse of the Ottoman Empire wasn't nibbed on by the Western Powers until well into the 1900s. Before that it was mostly revolutions related to national identites - the Balkans, Bulgaria, and Wallachia were very restive even when dominated by Byzantium and didn't stop for the Ottomans. Does it go back to the 1200's and the sack of Constantinople by the 4th Crusade, or the fighting between Venice and the Ottomans that was only tipped by the Black Death, or to the first, second and third Crusades?. Does it go back to the fall of the Abbasid Empire after it was kicked asunder by the Mongol hordes? Or was it the Reconquista?

The middle east is a crossroads so it's been on the receiving end of history a lot which created grudges. Their main religion had a split that was significantly more hostile than the Christian east-west schism almost immediately on the death of their prophet leading to extreme fringe movements on both the Sunni and Shi'a sides that gleefully slaughtered each other for 1,400 years or so. And then throw in lunatics like al-Wahhab backed by opportunists like the al-Sauds and you've got the ingredients for disaster. Even given this, though, the Umayyad and Abbasid empires were strong, stable societies that produced amazing things for many hundreds of years. Because, underneath it all people are people and just want to live their lives.

No, what's happening now in the middle east is similar to the growing pains the Christians had, although Christianity was lucky enough not to have automatic weaponry, or air bombardment. Remember that the Anglican church split from the Catholic church in the mid sixteenth century and England and France spent the next four hundred years fighting on the pretext of religion. Martin Luther nailed his reformation document to the walls in the early sixteenth century, and the East-West schism was formalized in the twelfth century and how much war, conquest, uprising, revolution and atrocity did those lead to. And in the end do we really believe it was religion?

It was always about power. And the people got screwed over and over again. And get screwed over again. Case in point: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/26/syria-heritage-in-ruins-before-and-after-picturesAnd eventually they snap. And in the chaos extremism breeds, and entropy always decreases so it's easier to break than to build, which starts a cycle that took western europe more than a millenium to get out of.

Very nicely articulated. I actually believe it's a little arrogant for Americans to think we "caused" the mess that is the middle east. We certainly helped escalate the situation but that's still another way of simplifying the discussion. It's not all our fault but it is our fault if we continue to amplify the problem.

Let's remember that the West imposed lines on the map in Africa and the Middle East that ignored religious, cultural, historical and geographical realities. And now we act surprised that these "countries" can only function as either a iron-fisted dictatorship or a corrupt cesspit? I fear the seeds we have sown over the past 400 or so years have finally fully ripened, and a wholesale bloodletting in the Middle East may be the only solution...but we should not be the ones involved at this point. It's well and nice to pontificate about human rights and fair treatment, but in a situation such as this, with too many people on too few resources to live in the way they see the rest of the world living, we may have to step back and allow nature to take it's course. Unfortunately, we seemingly cannot, and hence the drums are sounding again.

Thanks, Jim, for expressing my feelings so eloquently. I hear and feel the drums pounding, and I also hear the adding machines, and smell the money. The same people who always want to rush to war, are back-pedalling when it comes to their kids spilling their blood. You are 100% right. This is what happens when people have nothing else, no hope, no future. We did that, we took their lives and families from them, we took any chance at a normal life. Somewhere along the line, we went from being the leaders of world tolerance and right thinking to the vicious cop with too much armor and no interest in making the world community work strutting and throwing our weight around just because we can.

At the end of the day (day, world ,civilization childhood, whatever) we are just naked apes. We all of us inhabit a body and a brain that evolved primarily in social groups of 40-60. We live in societies of millions but that is not react to. When we see (and I think "see" is an important distinction. Visual images trigger responses that other forms of information does not) acts of violence against people who we identify as like us we react as that social animal out on the veld responding to a threat against the group. Our fear is immediate, existential. We are cornered animals lashing out. We don't care what the motivations of the threat were or the long term consequences of our response. The threat must be stopped. A good response for hunter gatherers. Not so good for nations. And here's the thing. when the bombs start dropping and that is what is going to happen. the people under those bombs whether they had anything to do with this or not will react in exactly the same way. They won't care what the motivation. They will react. They will defend, lash out. Cycle after cycle after cycleCivilization works for as long as we can keep the ape inside in check.But that will not happen here. It just won't.

Here's a clue. I'm from Mn, local boy politician Mark Kennedy said, in public mind you, "we will be vacationing in Iraq in two years". That is how naive lots of these morons are. Anybody see a little arogance floating around here. I was having coffee with some friends when they decided to go into Iraq, five of us, all Vietnam Vets, to a man we figured ten yrs. I guess we under shot that one.You are correct, they seem to learn nothing from our past.Anybody else notice, damn near all the Saber rattlers never served. Remember Hugo Chavez? He had the adasity to criticize the US, so religious boy, Pat Robertson suggested we take him out. I think I detect a pattern here.

I've met Mujahadeen and was heavily involved in the 'Oregon Committee for a Free Afghanistan' back in the 80's. Two days after 9/11, when Bush got up and said the words "Osama" and "Afghanistan" in the same paragraph, I immediately predicted 12 years in Afghanistan. I seriously under shot that one, too.

We are also to blame for continuing to support countries like Saudi Arabia -- and many of its neighbors -- but mainly the Saudis as that country is the major financier of a lot, if not most of this.....As long as it's people in France who are dying instead of people in Saudi Arabia...well, their system is working for them.

Well, I can see quite a few opinions here about what NOT to do. What SHOULD we do? I'm afraid I may know. I am a life long, seriously, a LIFE LONG committed non-violent person, having never struck another person with the intent of harm; ever. But seeing the looks, the tears, the blood, and the overall despair of individual people on that horrific scene (I was transfixed all night) causes me to question my own commitment to that ideal. As Jim Wright asserts, these are human cockroaches. I hate saying that. They will keep doing this and growing stronger by the day. I'm trying very hard right now not to embrace hatred. Could I kill one of them? Maybe. I do believe in defensive violence, and would be prepared to defend my loved ones. Is it that time now? By the way, I think the older people should fight the war(s). I'm sixty seven. Nobody would accept me medically, but if I thought my family was in danger, I'd find a way. Should I(we)?

There is a serious disconnect between claiming to be a "LIFE LONG committed non-violent person" and in the next breath calling another human being a cockroach, with the attached implication that they should be crushed out of existence, and contemplating whether or not you could kill one of "them". That right there is not the lesson of non-violence that i learned. It doesn't seem to me that you understood this post at all. I may be wrong, but my interpretation of what Jim said above is that by repeatedly creating chaos and NOT cleaning up our messes we have created the environment in which it is possible for another human to be so hopeless that blowing themselves up is preferable to continuing to live. The first comment I saw about the events in Paris was from my sister, who lives in the south of France, she said "people must be suffering so much to do such dreadful things !!! I hope one day we find a way to help us to realise that we are all human and that life is very difficult for all of humanity - please , be kind to one another, please dont use this horrible thing as an excuse to be even more horrible". both she and Jim seem to be saying the same kind of thing, the appropriate response is NOT more violence, that will only beget yet more. Let us learn how to build something together instead, learn from our similarities we can build strong bridges over our differences, so that this kind of thing stops happening.

I was always taught when something disturbs my world, my first question should be, "How did I create this?" It would serve us as a country to always ask that question and then care enough to do something about it.

The plan is for NATO to occupy the Middle East for at least three generations enforcing rule of law, educating the children about the past and the possible futures, establish an effective infrastructure. When I say Middle East I mean specifically Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Iraq,Lebanon,Afghanistan, Yemen, UAE.

Exactly. What comes after? Why does no one plan for THAT? What kind of world would we live in if we ALWAYS had to leave a country BETTER off than when we went in? Wouldn't we be more aware of peacekeeping than warmongering? We really need to focus on cleaning up our messes before we go running off with sabers in hand - oh, yes, but our leaders won't be the ones to do the running toward war with sabers, it will be other people's children who are sent, because, after all, our leaders will find a way to make sure that their little bobble-headed silver spooned offspring will be safe and cozy in some protected outfit that will NEVER be sent to any war. Exactly whose liberty do our sons and daughters fight for and why? Here's an idea: the ones who have the opportunity to stay safely home during war or war-like conditions (relatively speaking - the folks of NY on 9/11 and Paris yesterday WERE home!) should be the ones sent to take care of the nation building afterward. Yeah, idealistic, I know.

Too one-sided. Plenty of fingers to point in the west, but let's not pretend that we're the sole cause or necessarily the most powerful one. There are plenty of reasons to see the big powers in the Middle East as having a major hand in how this goes. And they're not exactly suffering any economic hardships. Bin Laden didn't come from poverty. For that matter, neither did Lenin. I suggest taking a look at this piece in the NEW YORKER: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france before drawing overly-simplistic conclusions.

We already have the usual right-wingers screaming over this incident as further "proof" that some sort of outlandish counter-strike coupled with even greater oppression, suppression, ad nauseam, is the right way to go. And of course, they're way out of line.

But an equally extreme analysis in the other direction? I wouldn't want to be in the underclasses in an Arab country in the Middle East, or a Muslim in the ghettos of Europe, etc. But there is more to the growth and spread of terrorism than downtrodden, poverty-stricken Muslims, as a careful look at who actually funds and leads terrorist groups strongly suggests. And without a certain strain of Islamic fundamentalism, suicide bombing is a pretty tough sell to anyone who isn't mentally ill. There's often such fundamentalism behind suicide attackers, as was seen with kamikaze pilots in WW II as well. I don't think we brought that one on ourselves. But the extremism and belief in some holy purpose was quite strong and quite devastating, though at least mostly limited to actual combatants rather than civilians minding their own business.

I don't care what the west is doing to other people: there is no justification for killing civilians. There are plenty of military targets available, and there , while Americans may get their rhetorical underwear in a bunch, at least there's some sort of logic and justice involved. Killing ordinary citizens? Does ANYONE really believe that France is suddenly going to "surrender" to ISIS as a result? The World Trade Center bombings really worked out well for the cause of Islamic fundamentalism, too.

By the way, of course the US is guilty of killing innocent people overseas. But shouldn't the response be against the military, rather than civilians? Is the goal of terrorism to win or just to wreak revenge, even if it's not harming the people actually responsible for attacks of ANY kind in the Islamic world?

Yes, he did. So did I. And I agree with him. Poor, downtrodden, no other choices but a bad one? Bullshit. The 9/11 hijackers came from middle class or better upbringings. The 7/7 attackers were partly home-grown and of the same origin.

Rather than it being *our* doing, it's *their* doing. Refer to the commenter above who pointed out that just as Christianity had it's schisms and Dark Ages Islam is having them, too, and after about the same amount of time had passed since its founding.

"It's just terrible what we've done to other prople and it's only right and just that we suffer for it until we rectify all the wrongs we've done."

Thanks again, Jim. I also think education and vigilance in our citizens can help, however fairy tale-like this may sound. We educated people about AIDS, after a good long decade of needless panic. Knowing what to look for, as far as suicide bombers go and the If You See Something, Say Something strategy can't hurt. http://reportsafrique.com/security-alert-how-to-recognize-a-suicide-bomber/

When you titled this essay, you may not have considered the literal financial cost of war. But wars are expensive. The last Iraq war was fought with borrowed money in a boom, with a eating up the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration. This one we will be fighting, if we fight it, in the depths of a depression and it will be run by people who want to cut taxes on the rich.

I don't know how the macroeconomics will shake out; no-one on the Republican side has proposed even a realistic peacetime budget yet. In a depression, wars, paradoxically, can be — but are not always — economically stimulative. But it's a fair bet that if the Republicans are in charge the rich are going to get richer and the rest of us are going to get poorer.

We have the military power to defeat just about anybody in a ground war. But we don't have the man power in uniform to enforce a peace. That would require tens if not hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. That would require a draft and huge tax increases. The political will is not there for that. Thus we wind up with a "small scale" forever war fought in someone else's country.

Damn straight! The plan...where to start, clean water, a roof over their heads, food to eat. I did my "time" in the Peace Corps in a small country in West Africa. The dictator was tossed out and democracy broke out (chaos). We were left in country because brave folks like you were able to be there off-shore to airlift us out if things got really bad. The scene on the ground there was similar to the stories we hear all the time (machete's, chaos -- old rivalries finally able to settle the score, etc.). As American's we were always asked when was "Rambo" coming in to save them/us. We never have a plan. The profiteers do, we need a plan to stand up to them here at home first. (Clean up our own mess, before we make another.)

Once again, my thoughts come out of your mouth ( a bit more eloquently than I could say them ). I feel partially responsible as an American - even though I had nothing to do with the underlying causes. How do we fix this now?

And forty people were murdered in Beirut two days ago by these same fanatics. On 3 October, bombs killed 18 in Nigeria. In June, Saudi bombing in Yemen killed 54 civilians and injured another 55. And that's barely skimming the surface.

::hands:: I've read about the Beirut and Nigerian bombings, as well as the take over & killings in the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya by al-Shabbab forces as well as the 147 killed in Kenya at Garissa University.

Much of the column and comments have been about why they hate and will attack the US, but they've twice recently attacked the French. France has been notoriously slow to join our misadventures in the Middle East. So why them? The French are hardly pushovers, in spite of the WWII surrender jokes and rhetoric?

The terrorist have been trying to get us to come after them. They've cut off heads and burned people alive becoming more and more vicious trying so hard to make us come to them, but now, this attack on Paris. It worked before with 9-11 and it will probably work again as we keep going around this merry go round of war with new more vicious players. Thank goodness Obama is in charge this time, but will cooler heads prevail? We shall see, but another war without a plan, as you said, will never ever have a positive outcome and will probably just grow another snake with a bigger head.

Pure brilliance again, Jim. "Destruction is easy, creation is the hard part." Abso-fuckin-lutely. Perhaps leaders would stay for the clean-up and rebuild if the PEOPLE would encourage and let them. It'll never happen.

One of the things I observed once is that intelligence work and building things appear to be harder for Americans (can't say about anybody else) because war has a psychological connection to the size of the American penis, metaphorically speaking.

Not everybody is affected by this in the same way, and I suspect that some people are completely resistant to the lure. But in general, there's a sizable portion of the American population that just needs a pizza and a war on TV where America Is Kicking Ass And Taking Names Of The Evildoers, and there's an immediate ego boost.

“We created this. Terrorism, the kind we face today? It comes from the fact that we, us, we keep blowing up civilization and leaving nothing but death and ruin in our wake. We created this. Yes we did. We created the conditions for it to grow. To incubate, ignored over there, in the chaos we created.”

Jim, I believe your hypothesis is way to simplistic.

As General Sisi notes in a speech given almost 2 years ago: “Religious discourse is the greatest battle and challenge facing the Egyptian (Muslim) people, pointing to the need for a new vision and a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam—rather than relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years.”

Let's take a look at just a few examples that seem to justify the actions of Radical Islam which includes ISIS:

Qur'an 2:191 “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.”Qur'an 9:123 “O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.”Qur'an - 5:51 "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other."Qur'an 9:5 “When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.”Qur'an 3:85 “Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.”Qur'an 9:30 “The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.”Qur'an 5:33 “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam”Qur'an 22:19 “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.”Qur'an 8:65 “The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.”Qur'an 3:28 “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.”

Bottom line: “we” did not create this mess on our own as it has become part of radical Islam’s “convert the Kefir’s” psyche for the past 800 years. What I do accept is that we truly screwed up with our destabilizing an autocratic form of government with our stupid insistence on a democratic form of government. The Obama Cairo speech started this ball rolling (Mubarak and the MB) and we compounded the problem when Obama walked away after we spent blood sweat and tears stabilizing Iraq and when this administration and Cameron outed Gadhafi. I suspect that we will have to go back in and destroy ISIS and their base of operation. What a mess and it is the citizens of the ROW that have to pay the price for a flawed Foreign Policy. How does one disengage when one side has clearly stated and actioned (9/11, 7/7, Spain, Paris etc etc) that you either convert or die? I'm with the French, we are at war.

OMG! Another person quoting the Quran who has never read the Quran. When you cherry pick your passages (based on someone else's work, I am sure) you miss the beauty that is in the Quran and that most Muslims see. There are far more passages about mercy and forgiveness than there are about violence.If you really want to read a violent book, read the Torah (aka Old Testament). Now that is a book that should really scare you. Yet Jewish people are kind and compassionate for the most part and not viscious killers.Why don't you get your head out of your ass and start learning to think critically instead of parroting someone else's views?Err.....yes, you can safely read the Quran - it won't warp your mind.

It is amazing how applying a little critical analysis gives clarity of thought of the situation. I admire your skills (especially your literary skills) sir and your professionalism. Thank you Jim for sharing your skills with all of us. I came to much the same conclusion, as you have. Until recently, I felt like the lone wolf crying in the wilderness wondering if anyone else was out there.

Yes, Jim. Yes. I couldn't agree more. I was saying the same things to my wife today. One trouble is that the military industrial complex doesn't profit from peace. The rich don't get a return on investment from peace. Hell, they don't get a ROI from dealing with the veterans and you can see every day the tragedy out in cities across the continent; homelessness, suffering, hopelessness, substance dependency........

We need a new model. No country is allowed to commit to war, who hasn't committed to the peace.

Very true and very sad. I'm past the age where it will affect me much, but life for my niece and my nephews-and a lot of their friends is going to change forever. Again. Like it did after 9-11 and like it has since Iraq. I'm astounded to suddenly realize that they have never known a time when we haven't been to war somewhere

It happens I live (in the UK) closer to Paris than about a third of France. The attacks last night actually caused me stress. "Fuck them. Fuck them all. Wipe them out, kill every Daesh fucker. Ring the area, then show them what a WMD really looks like."

It was your post of a few weeks ago that kept me sane - the one about FAEs. Usually the bit of me that sits outside says "This will pass." and lest my anger run it's course. It wasn't sitting there last night.

Luckily I had WWJS. What Would Jim Say? Turns out you were my own personal Atheist Jesus!

hat I am worried about is the Middle East too far gone? Have we, the West, destroyed any chance of reconciliation?

As far as I can tell much of this roots in 1948. The State of Israel turns up. Boom. One year no Israel, next a new country. As I understand it the US ambassador out of the blue supported Israel, a move that blindsided the US allies, who thought there was going to be some form of negotiation. Israel - a state born out of terrorism. The Israeli heroes were terrorists, killing British troops who they saw as occupiers. And thus the Palestinian struggle was created. A struggle that became a Cold War Proxy. They support Them, therefore We support You.

But if you criticise Israel you are anti-Semitic. That's what we are told. And so Israel illegally occupies. And with every bullet Us and Them is re-inforced, until Them will no longer trust Us.

Let me fast forward 30 years. 1979. Perception relies on point of view.

What if I said there was no Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? What if I said what happened in 1979 was the legally recognised government requested help from an ally. Tones of Hungary 56 maybe. In Afghanistan girls went to school. Women wore pant-suits. Here the terrorists were Islamic fundamentalists to whom this was an anathema.

But Afghan was supported by Them. So We had to support the Mudjahadine. And hey, it was cheap, because the money came from Ollie North's little sideline in Central America. It doesn't matter who you support, as long as the oppose Them. It doesn't matter how repressive the Shah of Iran is, because he is Ours. Ergo any one opposed to him is Them. Nobody considered that the reverse is true. If you oppose the Shah, the US and Britain are Them.

So the Mudjahadine won. And we walked away. We had won. How arrogant. thinking that Our People defined themselves only by their relationship with Us. But when Israel is the enemy, We are the enemy. And here come the Taliban, birthed by the Mudjahadine

And so to 9/11.

The world stood with the US. The Taliban had no friends. Muslim countries went "not one of ours, they are nutters."

And so we invaded. It was as much liberation as invasion. The irony. They had been Ours because They opposed Them. But the reason they opposed Them was for the same reasons we now found them so abhorent

The peace was there to be won. But then there was Saddam.

Saddam had been Ours. Because Iran was Theirs because the Shah was Ours. And when Saddam complained that Kuwait was stealing oil by diagonal drilling under Iraqi territory, what did the US say? "Inter Arab disputes are not our concern". Well, the message was obvious. Go ahead. Do what you need. It is inter-Arab, as long as the oil keeps flowing.

If he'd stopped at the wells, gone to the international forums, then maybe 1991 would have been different. But the problem with supporting Ours is that we don't always do a full background check. And even when we do, the answer is "He isn't there's".

So Saddam went too far, and Iraq became unfinished business.

So on 9/12, when the world was saying "What can we do" Rumsfeld and Cheney were saying "Tell us it's Saddam."

It wasn't. But as Dick Clarke found out, that was the wrong answer.

So we had Afghanistan. But it wasn't Saddam. "He had something to do with 9/11" the Americans were told. "He's got WMD," we were told. And to be fair, Cheney should know - daddy Bush still had the receipts.

Rumsfeld didn't "want jungle gyms", he wanted Saddam, the unfinished business. So at the point of victory in Afghan. At the point Bin Laden was holed up in Tora Bora, waiting to be found....

... The US and UK pulled too many troops out and invaded Iraq. And so instead of winning one peace, we lost two countries.

Thanks, Jim. I've been going over in my mind how it's always the same, how we made this happen, but you helped me solidify my thinking on it. If I may ask, what DO we do this time, to not make more of the same? I have ideas, but you have the real hands-on expertise to know what's what. Help us all demand a good plan this time.

This all started with the Islamic theological doctrine of tawhid, (absolute unity). One implication of this doctrine is that the entire universe is Muslim, which of course includes the entire earth. This doctrine began playing out as Muslim warriors poured out of Arabia after having conquered it for Islam, and began attacking both the Byzantine and Persian empires. They continued attacking and conquering until they had won the Middle East, North Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, the Balkans and some of Asian Minor. Finding the Sahara Desert a less than attractive option for conquest, they proceeded to attempt Europe, first conquering Spain, then proceeding to France, where they conquered half the country. They were turned back at Tours by the forces of Charles Martel, and retreated to Spain. This massive Islamic empire eventually conquered Constantinople, and then set its sights on Europe from the East. The Ottomans were only turned back at Vienna in the late 1600s, and retreated back to modern Turkey.

After siding with the losers in WWI, the Ottoman Empire was carved up into the countries of the modern Middle East, as noted above. But Islamists have been trying to recreate the caliphate ever since by overthrowing the kings and dictators and reuniting the territory once ruled by the caliph. Finding that these governments were propped up by Western forces, primarily the military of the US, attacks began against US military installations and barracks in an attempt to force the US military out of the Middle East. The thinking was that forcing the US to leave would render these Middle Eastern countries greatly weakened and much easier to overthrow. When the attacks against the military didn't work, attacks against civilian targets commenced, hoping the civilians would find the price of the US presence in the Middle East too costly, so that we would demand our military leave.

Failure to consider the theology and military history of Islam leaves us susceptible to myopic and short-sited conclusions that somehow "we" are responsible for "causing" a phenomenon that has existed and manifested on and off for 1400 years.

There are literally MILLIONS of decent, respectful, law-abiding, peaceful Muslims all over the world who co-exist just fine with non-Muslims. They are flesh and blood human beings raising their babies to be just like them.

The people who perpetrated the atrocities on 9/11, on a train in Spain, in Beirut, in Paris............. they are assholes who drape themselves in religion and warp and twist it to their own selfish ends.

Maybe we can take your template and say all Americans are just like the gunmen who walk into schools and kill children. Because, you know, the Eagle is holding arrows in its talon. There's a 2nd Amendment to ensure the entire nation is armed to the teeth.

No. You can't paint an an entire population with a brush dipped in the color asshole. FFS

After WWII, we had the Marshall Plan, and we had the will to help fix a broken Europe. What the hell happened to us? A hurricane devastates New Orleans or New York, and we piss and moan about who gets to do what and how much it will cost, and then some yarak kafali in Congress decides to vote against aid because something something taxes budget. We enter Afghanistan and Iraq, win the main conflict, then put in place some half-assed BS that makes things worse and call it a win -- oh, and piss and moan about how much it's all costing us and think we should just let the Middle East burn itself down (except for Israel, which has to be protected until Jesus comes back) and then urge bombing the hell out of it until everything's radioactive or poisoned. Sheesh.

All the sabre rattling, arms, plans for destruction, killing, droning, and airstrikes in the world will do nothing to wipe Islamic fundamentalism off the face of our Earth... because it is an idea. And you can't kill an idea except by supplanting it with a BETTER idea.

Jim, I have been a fan of your writing for awhile now. I by no means want to tell you how to write. I think there was one more thing you should have hit upon: the fact that those running the war machine are continuing to earn vast sums of money allowing this bullshit to continue. Realistically speaking, for them, there is no reason for them to WANT to end all of this....

Before Syria was a chaotic pit of death, it was an orderly pit of death. Instead of dying in front of smartphones, their fate announced on LIveleak and Youtube, Syrians died out of sight in the Tadmur Prison, where death was an assembly line. Similar things can be said for Libya

So it's not like what got destroyed was much better than the ongoing civil war. We did not quite "cause this."

Yes, there were many deaths under the Assad family, and no one should defend that dictatorship, but Telemaque's argument still fails. Before the civil war, Syria had hundreds to thousands of unjust deaths, and millions of people living in cities and towns. After the civil war in Syria, the scale of death and destruction is massive. Entire towns and cities have been destroyed. There have been tens to hundreds OF thousands of deaths. Millions of people are displaced, homeless, many starving. America and Russia could have helped work out a deal to get rid of Assad, but did not want to do so. Telemaque, what got destroyed was a civilization, but when someone (you) does not want to see a problem, then they do not.

A painfully precise essay. Anyone who has simply watched the movie or read the book "Charlie Wilson's War" would be able to deduce that this was the eventual outcome in Afghanistan and the Middle East. That it is exported to other nations isn't a surprise either because terrorism is using "terror" as a method of disruption of civilization. Great writing, Jim, and I wish I could comment on your Facebook.

In addition let's hope that the US recognizes that our policy of defeat then leave is causing the conditions that give rise to the terrorists groups before the goverments of our allies, like France, England, Germany, Turkey and others, get tired of dealing with the shit we leave behind. There are already individuals from those countries, including the US citizens, going to Syria to support the ISIS cause. If anti US sentiment grows in those countries those same goverments may tell the US they will no longer permit our military presence in their country. That will take this to an entirely new level of threat to the US.

On social media where insanity, stupidity, and inexcusable ignorance abounds, I am greatly relieved to find a voice of sanity such as yours. Your posts, and the comments on them, reassure me that there are still folks out there who have a clue and actually give a damn. This one is the best yet, and I'll definitely be sharing!

"This all started with the Islamic theological doctrine of tawhid, (absolute unity)."

Which only extremists subscribe to. But Islamists have been pretty lax about this subscription during the 12-centuries since, which makes the necessity for understanding this somewhat suspect. Fine, sure. Keep it in mind. But it seems clear that it has little to do with the events of yesterday, or even terrorism in general.

Religious ideologies are convenient backdrops for terrorism, but they're not why terrorism exists in the first place. You can find in nearly any religious text the basis for nearly any horrible antisocial behavior, from slavery to molestation to murder to war, but the vast majority of actual practicing religious believers won't commit an atrocity merely because they can find justification for it.

"... they have literally nothing better to do ..."This may be the most chilling sentence I have ever read.

Given the means and the opportunity, what's to prevent them from blowing up the entire planet?

We may not be responsible for causing the phenomenon; but we sure as hell are responsible for the people and their attitudes that we put in power to act, on our behalf. In that sense, we are responsible for how the phenomenon is dealt with.

I just recently wrote this to a friend who also happens to be a vet from both gulf wars. "Being a member of an invading army is NOT going to have them show you their best side. Imagine how WE would react if they invaded our country and took over. We wonder how they could have suicide bombers, yet we give Medals of Honor to those who throw themselves on grenades for their comrades. Hell, you really want to know what it's like? Ask a Native American how they feel about our government."

Hell, we have people here who call themselves "Patriots" that view our own government as an occupying force. And we wonder how folks who's country we invaded and destabilized can hate us?

What if one time... just one time... we invaded a hostile country with... hospitals... schools... wells... sewage treatment... garbage disposal... power plants... roads... bridges... housing... trucks...tractors... buses... railroads... kitchens... bathrooms... beds... showers... doctors... nurses... teachers... engineers... food... clothing... eyeglasses... prosthetics... soccer fields... technical schools... even government bureaucrats... we could spend a fraction of what we spend on military forays... yes, some would die in the effort, but we have soldiers die as well... if we tried it I KNOW people would volunteer to go just like our military is volunteer...I would go...I know many who would go... warriors win wars... they do not win peace... peacemakers win peace... when will we support an invasion of peacemakers at the same level we support invasions of warriors?

No. Al Qaida no more destroyed us than a bee sting kills an allergic person. WE destroyed us, as surely as a raging self-immune reaction destroys a person after a relatively minor insult. Bin Laden killed 3000 people on 9-11. We kill many more than that *every year* because we fetishize guns, but no one declares 'War on Gun Terror'. Bin Laden *himself* said he hoped that we'd react just as we did. We caused vastly more damage by our reaction to the attack than the attack ever did; and like an immune system primed to over-react to a specific antigen, we wildly over-react to an act of terrorism.

That is the point. It's right in the NAME of the act: 'terrorism'. They only threaten our existence IF WE LET THEM. We face REAL existential threats: Global warming, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons waiting for a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump to place their hands on the trigger, an oligarch class that seems determined to treat the rest of us as slaves once we've tasted lives as not-slaves, a technological infrastructure that would collapse if the Sun decides to burp at us like it did in 1859.

THOSE things pose a serious threat to civilization. Some damned religious nutjobs with some ak's and suicide belts don't. Don't give these fucks that power over our lives; that is the first step towards abating the autoimmune destruction that'll really kill us.

I'm not belittling the pain and fear of those who were affected, but this is by no means an existential threat. We DO face those, and we're doing not a goddamned thing about them.

And it is happening. The loudest voices, the ones who see boogie men behind every face that doesn't look like theirs, they will be the ones to control the narrative because we will once again let them. Then we will again live with the bullshit of not meeting their required level of rhetorical patriotism, of rhetorical Christianity. Goddammit, this fucking sucks.

Thanks for letting me speak, and thanks for the pool of sanity amid the swamp of this jingoistic nightmare.

I don't understand the reaction in the U.S. as if terrorism is a recent development. Terrorism has been with us for generations, just the names have changed. There were the IRA, the group that killed the Israelis at Munich, and other groups who bombed innocents in Europe. I remember visiting Europe in 1979 and going through security to enter the British Museum and other places in London. I remember seeing signs warning people to report unattended packages. I am listening the CNN. ( I know old habits are slow to died). The one terrorist who has been identified is a French born muslem who was a petty criminal and raised is very poor area of Paris. He fits Jim's description of a life so bad that the offers of the afterlife are an improvement.

oh for goodness sake! use the brain you were given, and read again what the man has written. You will see that he quite clearly states that, even if a current system is bad and deserves to be removed the important thing to do, to prevent something even worse replacing it, is to have something positive to replace it with, a detail that has been sorely lacking in any action on foreign soil undertaken by the wonderful US of A for decades and decades. And we all know what basic human needs absolutely HAVE to be met to ensure human advancement, those would be the classic Maslow hierarchy.... food and shelter, and safety. Once those are guaranteed friendship and family and other positive relationships can follow, which enhance self esteem, not to mention recognizing that oneself and all other humans on the planet are connected, and this would lead to what Maslow called self actualization, which i interpret as reaching one's best potential. So, how about starting, as someone up the thread a ways suggested, with "invading" with improved infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, etc. i'm sorry, but this is a problem i encounter every day; it is too much work to think for oneself, it is so much easier to have someone else tell you what to think, that is such a cop-out, i have to give myself a time out so i don't bang heads together.

We can't really expect them to want to feed and clothe a foreign nation when the same people who are banging the war drum the loudest are attempting to take those very things away from our own people. I'm afraid that the powers that be have forgotten that it's "Bread and Circuses". If you take away the bread the circuses won't be enough to keep the populace docile.

Just what I believe, Jim, from the UK. So good to hear an American thinking and speaking like this, there is little evidence of this radical thinking coming from the US that reaches us. I hate hearing that terrorism is caused by Islam with no acknowledgement of our own part in it all, which includes Britain's role in colonialism as well as the later wars you cite. And in the case of Paris, France's colonial past as well. We have made a mess of this world but we don't think the mess should ever reach our shores. I'm right with you, more power to your elbow. Thank you for writing this.

Well writ as always Jim Wright. You make a very good case there indeed.

But Da'esh are still utterly evil and to them I say this :

Pledge against Da'esh :

You want us to be afraid? We will not be afraid.

You want us to hate? We will not hate.

You want us divided? We will unite more than ever.

You want us to attack and blame the wrong people who have no link to you other than fleeing your evil? We refuse to do so.

You want us to call you "Islamic state" and see you as "warrior" enemies? We will call you by the name you like least and think of you as what you are; vile criminal douchebags with delusions of grandeur.

You want to be taken seriously and dominate our thoughts by all your murders and atrocities? We will defeat you with the ridicule and disdain and contempt you deserve and live our lives as we always have despite you.

You have taken some lives but you cannot take our freedoms or our nature or our joie de vivre.

To all your cruel and brutal carnage against innocents, we will respond with cool and firm determination against you and warm compassion and defiant aid to all those you seek to harm.

This we pledge.

And we shall prevail over you. Because united we stand and love wins.And you are hate and we all know it.

I've read that the only part of the military not involved in the invasion was the Army civil affairs people, the ones who set up a government in freshly occupied territory. A lack of other sensible theories (OK, a few really did believe they'd magically become a western democracy) has led me to believe that we invaded to keep Iraqi oil off the market, and get oil prices up. It sure worked. Great essay as usual, thanks.

Thank you, Jim. I had been silent about Paris (up till I read your post) because it's the same old, same old, and I am so exhausted by our failure to understand cause and effect. You articulated the whole can of worms brilliantly and effectively. I am grateful and sent you a contribution.

It is fiction, but the film Syriana represents well how people can fall so far in life that they can be convinced that death through a terror act seems not only reasonable but the only option. The film encapsulates multiple threads re the corrupting influence of Western corporate control of foreign resources; US Intelligence and Diplomatic decisions driven by those corporate interests; and the brutal approaches of our (Arab) ally states wrt the degrading treatment of their own people and foreign workers (in this case Muslims).

Two young men, tossed out of work, penniless and without prospects are noticed and taken in by a welcoming local Madrasa. For perhaps the first time ever they live in a clean and secure place, fed good and plentiful meals and all they have to do is study the Koran. Until the day that they are offered the chance to make a difference for their families and strike a blow for their faith. Check it out, at least to bone up on ur Arabic.

Some of these knuckleheads suicide themselves cuz they are truly nutcases (see any OTT religio-extremist fanatic). But a large percentage of Muslim terror bombers and operatives are convinced through life experience, indoctrination and coercion that the best option is to die while attacking a perceived source or symbol of their degraded lives.

As Jim relates, through direct Western military, diplomatic and economic actions over in the last century, allied with the repressive regimes and societies of our Mideast "partner" states, we have helped to grow generations of "terrorists" willing or resigned to attack the target of their hatred and source of their pain. Fucked up decisions have consequences.

Tell ya what, Jimmy. You can take your sanctimonious airs of moral superiority and shove 'em straight up YOUR gaping libertarian ass! Tape some C4 to it, you prattling poseur!

No, we don't 'deserve this' and neither do the citizens of France. Those people were invited into the country with friendship and as soon as they had the numbers they went on the offensive. They threaten, attack, and gloat, then play the victim and beg for mercy at the prospect of retaliation.

None of this is fair. It's LIFE you moron - fresh from the third world where twits like you are shot and killed and forgotten about every day - sometimes just because you're there, sometimes because your murderers have a political point to make. You can't reason with these animals; they have blood feuds that are three times older than the nation you smarmily lounge in and deride for its immorality.

Your entire comment is rendered null and void in the first sentence. Libertarian? There are few political ideologies I have more contempt for than libertarianism and if you had actually read what I wrote and read what I write on a regular basis you'd know that.

You put 'deserve this' in quotes. Go back to the essay, go through it line by line, word by word, and point to the part where I said that France deserved this terrorist attack in any way whatsoever. Point to the part where I said anybody deserved this. Ask an adult for help with the big words. Go on. I'll wait.

those people were invited into the country with friendship and as soon as they had the numbers they went on the offensive

There's no hard evidence of that as yet, though you are likely correct and for the sake of argument let's say you are. Don't you want to know why? Why would young men who were offered sanctuary turn on their benefactors? Don't you wonder at the causal roots of terrorism? Don't you wonder how it might be prevented in the future? How we might prevent the very mass refugee problem you blame for this horror in the first place?

Or is it just fuck it, kill 'em all, build a wall, keep 'em out, leave 'em to the holocaust? Is that it? It is, isn't it?

Tell me again about your supposed superior morality, tell me what separates you from the “animals.”

You can't reason with these animals; they have blood feuds that are three times older than the nation you smarmily lounge in and deride for its immorality.

Again, point to the part where I said any such thing. In fact what I said is that war is now, again, inevitable. We have no choice but to go in and wipe them out. Again, tell me, Glenn, what separates those "animals" from people like you? Obviously, it's not reason or morality or reading comprehension, so what is it exactly? Wait ... is it the fact that they at least have the courage of their convictions and you're just a, what was it? Oh yes, a "prattling poseur?"

Nobody deserved this, least of all France and I never said otherwise.

What I said was "we created this." We (and you'll note I never defined the "we" either, you get from that what you put into it) created the conditions for terrorism to thrive. And people just. like. you, Glenn, turn a blind eye to our culpability, you wash your hands of it. Thanks for proving my point, you and people like you, are exactly who I was talking about when I said "we."

Fuck off now, back to whatever little den of hate and rage you came from and take your chainsaw with you.

I'm totally baffled by our lack of will to rebuild the countries we destroy. We have one of the shining examples of history to look at, and we turn away. Why can't we learn from MacArthur's rebuilding of Japan?

I think you've missed one aspect of this, Jim. The CIA deliberately enacts brutal regime change across the globe in an effort to stamp out any Socialist movements. When you see a country democratically elect a Socialist leader, you know the implosion of their country is not far behind; we topple their leaders and deliberately support the Fascist dictator who takes their place.

It happened in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Cuba, Honduras, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Congo, Brazil, Iran, Turkey, and it is happening currently in Ecuador. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, they elected a Socialist government that did its best to drag the country into the modern era: they outlawed the hijab, declared equality between men and women, championed women's education and healthcare, and had more women in government positions than there were in the U.S.(!)

The U.S. is deathly afraid of this populist movement that values workers over oligarchs, so it smashes it wherever it can find it. We toppled Afghanistan's progressive, Socialist government, deliberately gave power to the Taliban, and intentionally used radical Islam as a defense against the Soviet Union. It's not that we're bad at nation-building, it's that these places are left as hell-holes deliberately because that's what's best for the United States.

And then, inevitably, when we have to fight this foe we created, the Military Industrial Complex gets all of that sweet, sweet Pentagon black budget money. It's a racket, and the American people have been played for fools for decades.

You seem to forget that it was the Soviet Union that invaded Afghanistan and ousted that progressive government. Pretty much for the same reason our forces have been there so long. They have lots of rare earth metals our companies are just dying to mine. Not to mention great oil pipeline routes.

I'm having a truly tough time of sitting on my fingers. I've let myself be sucked into a facebook discussion with someone who is claiming that Obama has decimated our military readiness. I so want to respond that that was claimed about Clinton years ago as well. Considering how quickly Bin Ladin was cornered and nearly caught at Tora Bora, I'm not falling for that exaggeration again.

Demand specific itemization of the supposed decimated readiness: Item by item, line by line, make them spell it out and show their work.

We have the most powerful and capable military not only in the world but in the entire history of the world. We just commissioned the most powerful warship in the history of the human race, the Zumwalt class destroyer. We have squadrons of the world's most capable fighters and bombers, generations ahead of anybody else with another new one coming online right now. We have enough nuclear firepower sitting out there on the Great Plains to end every single life on the planet. Our intelligence apparatus is larger than the entire information processing capability of most advanced nations. Our police forces are militarized. Our second string National Guard is better equipped, better trained, and more experienced that most countries' front line troops. More than that, our troops are battle tested, tempered, and experienced by two decades of combat, and our military industrial complex is funded to more than 20% of our GDP and larger than the next 7 countries (most of which our allies) combined.

We've been at war for 15 years. 15 YEARS. And? Morale is high, recruiting meets its quota every month, the current generation joins up in such numbers that we have to early retire older troops.

So, explain where the decimation is, because as a 24 year veteran of the US military, I sure as fuck am not seeing it.

The part you and Jim and that dumbdick Al Franken are missing is that the military accomplishes missions *despite* the things peaceniks like Obama and B. Clinton do to them. So, yes, those assholes *did* in fact do grave harm to our military forces and thus to our national security. But the soldiers rose above it because that's what they're trained to do.

So Shell, during your military career and combat service you must have personally experienced instances of how policies of a President or a single Senator had directly degraded US military readiness and resulted in the failure to accomplish specific missions. Could you please provide concrete examples of how Presidential actions had done "grave harm to our military forces" and national security?

As a Marine, I served during the Reagan, Bush 1 and Clinton terms. Followed by twenty more years at various roles in national intelligence, mostly in direct support of military operations. And I don't actually recall any situation where the President had a direct negative influence on military effectiveness. Well, perhaps in Lebanon in 1983. But, that's not a valid example of a Democrat doing grave harm.

On the other hand, Congress controls the national budget to include Defense. If you want to see examples of how to degrade readiness, Congressional mis-allocation of defense spending is a good place to start - i.e. keeping C-17 and M-1A1 production going when the DoD don't need or want more. Or, retaining obsolete and poorly sited legacy installations to keep spending tax dollars in some favored districts. Or directing spending on weapons and systems proven not to work as required. Those tax dollars could be better spent on other urgent needs, you think?

But then, as an experienced service member you no doubt already have a firm grasp on how the DoD manages competing needs from all services, and how they interact with Congress and the White House to plan and fund for current and potential operational requirements. As a wise man once said “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”

So Jim, I just distilled your thoughts and wrote an email to the President. Maybe he will listen. I can only try. Maybe if more of us wrote letters instead of hashing it out on blogs, somebody might listen? Maybe.

The most important thing any of can do without picking up a gun is to vote in the primaries, vote in the general election. Ann Coulter, that great thinker, announced with glee that the attack on Paris guaranteed (yes guaranteed) that Trump would be elected President. His Thursday night speech solution was to bomb the sh*t out of the oil wells cutting off funding to "those guys", accept whatever loss of life was incurred and turn it all over to "marvelous people at Exxon". I don't know right now who will get my vote but it won't be any of the drum beaters in the GOP. Hillary believes she has to act tough but does Bernie have the ability? All I do know is to vote and not just for President. State and local candidates affect your daily life so everyone should vote in every election or special election. Marlene

Ken Kesey appeared at an anti-war rally [it was a war in Vietnam we were protesting at that time]. He played his harmonica a little bit, then he said: "The only way we're going to end this war is if everyone in America just turns their backs & says 'Fuck it!' "Subsequently, & very roughly, that's what happened.The problem today is that there are many more groups upon whom we would have to turn our backs, if Mr. Wright's prophecy is not to be fulfilled. & there are many more Americans who would not be inclined to turn their backs. I have a bad feeling about this.

For what it's worth - I think one of the roots of this is an inability to cope as the world changes from structured to fluid. We're going through a great period of change, with communication beyond borders and travel across borders becoming routine. A lot of people have a great need for structure and order, and as they see it retreating they respond by trying to enforce it.

That's certainly visible in the government of the UK, and makes it ever harder for young people here to have lives of meaning. No wonder some are enticed away by promises of making a difference. And it's visible in what I see of the US politics freakshow as well. And of course it's visible in religious fundamentalism.

People crave a simple world. What can be more simple than framing it as a war between two sides? What can be more simple than saying, 'The world is too hard for me to handle, so let's burn it. And let's get off on exercising power over others before the end.'

All over the world impulses like these, and greed and self-image, drown out compassion and wisdom in a mighty refusal to think and reflect. And other people quietly get on with creating new ideas and working together to transform the face of society. But sadly they're not the ones who own the newspapers and rocket launchers.

It grows, inch by inch, day by day, cell by cell, recruit by recruit. Most of the time it grows right out in the sunlight, ignored - not unnoticed, ignored."

That... is actually *exactly* how mushrooms grow. The things we see are just the fruiting bodies of mycorrhizal tendrils growing just about everywhere underground. This isn't a nitpick, I'm just realizing this is actually a perfect analogy.

Well said. And now, in response to the latest conflagration of our own making, we'll do exactly what the terrorists would ask us to do, if they had a hotline to our political process: we'll deny sanctuary to refugees of their brutality, and well kill more children to prove to them that ours is a message of peace.

The French are going to take in another 30K refugees, which is real courage in the face of terrorism.

We're talking about shutting down mosques and hinting that Islam should be made illegal in America. The land of the fucking free.

And meanwhile, the neocons climb aboard the Pander Express and do their best to out-machismo the person to their left, all the while beating the war drums and calling for an all out air campaign. Our default position, the never ending air campaign. As if dropping incendiaries from the heavens makes it all go away down below.

Jim, Hello from a fellow Michiganian (Battle Creek ).Also a Navy vet flew F4 Phantoms in Vietnam. I enjoy your essays and have been following you for a few months. I though you and your readers might appreciate this article by Graeme Wood in Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ magazine very informative and very well researched .Keep the truth flowing Rick Smith

It's a hashtag for a phrase used on my Facebook and Twitter pages. "These Fucking People."

I commonly use the phrase as a punchline for the numerous daily articles I write on Facebook, eventually it became a term used by the 20,000 plus people who follow me there every day, and it is now entering into more widespread usage via the social media hashtag.

Jim, I like the way you think. This piece was one of the more incisive and stirring of your many I've read. I think the unique feature therein was beyond your unique and nearly pastoral rendition of your opinions, it was that you offered no fix, no "solution", no magic bullet to stop the insanity.

Thanks for linking twitter comments on your FB posts for those of us who don't tweet.

An immigration attorney names Scott Hicks has spelled out a few facts in an attempt to quell some of the ridiculous comments circulating via politicians and talking heads. It is too long to post here but you can see it on Jim Beaver's public FB page dated earlier today. Thought you might find it interesting. Wouldn't it be nice if some media people actually pulled their heads out of their @$$es to do a simple fact check piece?

Thanks for all the entertainment, education and ever expanding vocabulary lesson you provide. Keep up the good work!

I remember the First Gulf War, the night it started I was in labour with my youngest son, who will be 25 this year. I wonder to myself if after 25 years it hasn't gotten better will it ever?I'm Canadian, have never served, but siblings, parent, uncles,grandfathers and great grandfathers did. I grew up hearing about the atrocities committed by both the people in uniform and by they people they were fighting.It seems we haven't learned,we keep doing the same thing over and over. Isn't that the definition of insanity? I hear and see a lot of animosity towards the refugees and I keep saying I believe in HOPE, the hope we will all one day learn that war is not the way to peace. The hope that one day we will forget whatever books we each read that told us to *hate* one another. Finally the hope that we will stop looking at the colour of another person's skin and start looking at *who* they are.

Am I naive? Perhaps, but then again maybe not.

(PS I found you through Facebook and I love your forthright speaking manner!!)

I'll admit the French were in Afghanistan. But they had sense enough not to fall for invading Iraq - much to the disgust of Walter B. "Freedom Fries" Jones. Paris was more because of Algeria and Morocco and even Napoleon plundering Egypt. France has never known how to treat their former North African subjects. Make sure to keep them in their place. Mostly in the Banlieus of Paris, but definitely out of the mainstream. Why would they be resentful?

I remember back after the Soviet Union fell and G.H. Bush was in office, and Russia - a nation with a whole bunch of nukes - was reeling economically and socially. If it wasn't contained...! Some American Soviet expert thought we needed to jump in and do something and thought of one simple thing. The Russians really loved their grandmothers and the thought of them cold and hungry overwhelmed them. The guy suggested a humanitarian plan to help grandmothers. Make sure their homes or rest-homes had heat, light, water, care and food. Would not cost much but the gain that Americans were not what the Soviets told them we were for decades, would be enormous. Low investment; huge payback

Conservatives and George "No new taxes" Bush said no. And so the wound festered, and an opportunity lost.

"And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character." -- Michael Douglas's character from The American President 1995.

Too bad he is fictional, but wouldn't it be nice if SOMEONE stood up and said this? Someone who would make the GOP actually consider it?

What a great post sir, this is another fine example why Facebook needs a "stand up and cheer" emoji!

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Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lived longer in Alaska than anywhere else and misses it terribly. He recently moved to the fetid Panhandle of Florida and lives now in an ancient Cold War bunker of a house surrounded by alligators and rednecks. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

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